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The Tipped Scales of Justice

Mar 2

5 min read

The Tipped Scales of Justice


The Tipped Scales of Justice

The Taste of Betrayal


Wednesday, January 17th, 2024


The woman in the mirror was a stranger. Her eyes—glassed-over and hollow—stared back at me as I dragged a brush through my hair, the bristles catching on knots I didn’t feel. My hands moved like rusted machinery. For four days, I’d oscillated between violent sobbing and a dissociative numbness so thick I’d forget to blink. Friends echoed cautious optimism: The judge will see this is absurd. The prosecutor will drop it. But the survivor in me, the one who’d memorized the taste of betrayal, had already etched 183 endings into bone. Prison bars rusting in rain. A coffin lined with subpoenas. Futures dissolving, not like sugar, but like flesh in lye.


The reflection mouthed words I couldn’t hear: You have no future.


The Garage of Forgotten Corners

I forced myself to move, to leave the sanctuary of my home and face the day that loomed before me like an executioner's axe. The parking garage swallowed my car whole. Its air reeked of road salt and mildew—the stench of wet concrete and forgotten corners. My fingers shook as I took the ticket, its edges sharp enough to draw blood. What the fuck is happening? The engine silenced with a shudder. Leather seats leeched the warmth from my thighs, their coldness a taunt: Move. Walk. Pretend you’re still human. A scream rotted in my throat. I didn’t do anything wrong!


Justice’s Tipped Scales

The courthouse loomed—a monolith of stone and judgment, its windows reflecting a sky the color of a fresh bruise. The entrance yawned beneath stone gods: Justice with her scales tipped, and Wisdom clutching a book she’d never opened. The bronze doors burned cold under my palm. My reflection warped in the tarnished metal—a child’s face smudged into a mugshot. Then the hinges groaned.


Inside, the atrium devoured sound. Marble floors glowed like ice under the autopsy-bright glare of fluorescent lights. My pulse thudded in my temples, syncing with the flicker of the flight-departure-style screens cycling names. Three rotations. Not mine. Did they fix this? A man in a suit—kind eyes, offered to help—found my name. Second floor.


The courtroom door groaned like a coffin lid. Inside, the air was a living thing, the static of collective dread. Church pews packed with defendants. Lawyers murmured behind a wooden partition, their laughter a blade. The bailiff wheeled in an ancient TV that wheezed to life, its screen static-crackled. A judge’s pre-recorded voice droned about rights, sentences, procedure—a criminal orientation, like we were freshmen in hell.


The cold here wasn’t winter. It was the chill of a blade laid gently against your throat and called justice.


I scanned the room—no familiar face. The woman with the clipboard barked my name. “Do you have counsel?” My throat tightened. “Yes. He’s not here.” Her eyes flickered—pathetic—as she thrust papers at me. Alone. The TV static hissed. My heartbeat filled the silence—loud, arrhythmic, the only truth in the room.

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